The Next Web’s Weekly Recap: Real Time Web, iPad and the Startup Visa

Welcome to The Next Web’s Weekly Recap. If you love all things The Next Web make sure to grab your early bird tickets to The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam (April 27, 28 & 29).

This week saw a couple of big announcements relating to the real time web including WordPress’ support for the PubSubHubbub protocol as well as Twitter’s opening of the firehose to a new group of companies. The official iPad release date was also announced as well as rumors of an upcoming Google Tablet. Some big news also came out of the US this week relating to startups and keeping their founders in the US with the proposed Startup Visa.

Real Time WebBlogging took a big step forwarding in becoming real time this week as WordPress announced that all 10.5 million blogs have now gone real time by supporting the PubSubHubbub protocol. Twitter, the leader in the real time web discussion, also announced this week that they would be opening up their firehose to a variety of new companies (what this means). This announcement comes at a time when Twitter reached a key milestone of 10 billion tweets.

iPadIt became official this week that the iPad will be available on April 3rd with pre-orders starting on March 12th (get the official ‘I am buying the iPad’ countdown button). If you’re trying to figure out which iPad is right for you, check out our analysis here. This week also saw Apple go after HTC and Google with a patent infringement lawsuit surrounding multitouch, a key selling point of Apple’s iPad. Rumors also surfaced this week that Google as well as Sony are working on tablets to compete with the iPad.

US Startup VisaA very important piece of legislation was recently introduced in the United States that aims to allow entrepreneurs who are not US citizens to stay in the country if they meet certain criteria. You can support this cause by installing this widget, calling your state’s representative or sharing this video.